Unbreak Me

by Michelle Hazen

  LJ stared at her. “You own the Hi-Point All-Around Champion? As in, you didn’t only train her—she belongs to you. No co-owners or anything.”

  “Nope,” Andra said, distracted by the growl of her stomach. The bright taste of lemon had awakened her whole mouth, and she suddenly realized she was hungry.

  He snorted and opened the door. “Great. Can I borrow your Ferrari next time I need to make a run to town?”

  His teasing distracted her so she was inside with her eyes adjusting to the lower light before she thought to pause. “Wait, is this your apartment?” She’d asked Jason to get LJ settled on-site, so she knew he lived in one of the units. Why would he bring her to his place?

  “Home sweet home.” LJ laughed as if it were a joke.

  Andra tugged at the end of her ponytail, thinking about how long it’d been since she’d been in a man’s apartment. The walls in the employee housing were so thin Curt couldn’t watch Jeopardy! without Stacia calling out the answers. They were far from alone, and even if they had been, she had the feeling LJ wasn’t the type to try anything. She kind of liked the way he joked with her. The way the news of her past had made him sad, but he’d still treated her like any other woman.

  “Here you go.” LJ interrupted her thoughts by dropping a paper grocery sack in her arms.

  She caught the sides and frowned down into it before sending a quizzical look at her companion. He was already crouched in front of the refrigerator, pulling things off shelves and out of drawers, muttering to himself.

  He stood up and dumped a load of vegetables into her sack. Kicking the fridge closed, he opened a cupboard. Jason’s apartment always reeked of sweat and muddy boots, but LJ’s smelled like oranges and oven-warmed vanilla.

  Andra set the sack down on the tiny rectangular table pushed up against the wall. It wobbled when she bumped it, one leg a hair shorter than the others.

  “Okay.” She shook her head. “Seriously, what does your phone ringing have to do with why we are so urgently raiding your vegetable drawer?”

  “Because cake isn’t a square meal, and I can’t in good conscience leave you alone to starve on pickles and orange juice. The vegetables are for spaghetti.” He went back to the cupboard and pulled out a box of pasta, flipping it to her without looking to see if she was ready.

  She caught it with both hands and paused for a second before she packed it in the grocery sack.

  “As for my phone ringing itself hoarse, I bet you homemade hush puppies against your palomino that all those texts were from my mama, promising to whoop my ass if I didn’t make sure you were fed.” He went back to the fridge for a package of Italian sausage. “She’ll probably insist I teach you how to cook, too, so you don’t have to eat anything labeled ‘Salisbury steak’ ever again.” He patted her shoulder on his way to the table, as if she might be as distressed as he was by the concept. Spices spilled out of an overloaded rack on the counter, and he plucked several jars from among them.

  “LJ, you don’t have to teach me to cook. I’m too busy to bother most of the time, but I can make anything I want to.” Which was entirely true, as long as what she wanted was mac and cheese or scrambled eggs.

  “Take it as my apology for scaring you the first time we met.” He turned around, standing closer to her than anybody ever did. And yet his eyes were so warm and earnest that she forgot to move away. “I’m from the Lower Ninth Ward. We don’t turn our back on folks who’ve hit hard times.”

  Andra inhaled, putting it together all in a rush. His résumé said he was from New Orleans. Had he been there during the floods? She’d been a teenager when Hurricane Katrina came through, and he was maybe a few years older than her own twenty-seven. That place he’d mentioned—the Lower Ninth. It tickled a faint memory in her. Maybe she’d read about it somewhere, but it didn’t seem polite to ask.

  Instead she cleared her throat and said, “Spaghetti, huh? Shouldn’t you make something southern? Gumbo or grits, maybe?”

  “My mama loves all food equally.” LJ smiled. “But I thought I’d save the sashimi lesson for later.”

  “Sash-who-what?”

  He rolled his eyes and picked up the grocery bag. “Come on, Andie-girl. Your kitchen’s better than mine, and we obviously have a lot of work to do.”

  Five

  The sand in the arena smelled scorched, the summer sun cooking every bit of moisture out of the ground and the people who walked upon it. But Andra wasn’t paying any attention to the sweat sticking her shirt to her back, or the four-year-old gelding she rode. In fact, she finally gave up and stopped, because she was laughing too hard to properly cue the animal.

  LJ trotted a buckskin filly along the outside of the arena fence, saddlebags rattling and warbling a terrifyingly electronic version of “Ice Ice Baby.” He batted his eyelashes at Andra as he brought his horse to a stop. “What? You know Mary Kay doesn’t appreciate it when you laugh at her.”

  “Oh, I’m not laughing at her.” Andra tried to bite back her smile, side-passing her gelding away as the horse fought the bit, trying to push his head over the fence. “What’s going on with your, ah, music box saddle?”

  He reached back and jiggled the noisy saddlebags, Mary Kay startling and throwing her head before he calmed her once again. Then “Ice Ice Baby” was overlaid by a meeping version of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” The horse stopped, flicking her ears back to listen.

  “Cell phones.” LJ grinned. “They’re all set to go off at different times. Can’t sell your babies to some cowboy who’s gonna get dumped on his behind the first time his girlfriend texts him while he’s out riding.”

  She laughed. “Good point.”

  She’d seen a few people get thrown because their cell phones rang, but she rarely saw anybody taking the initiative to get colts used to different types of ringing sounds. She liked the thoughtful way LJ approached horses. A few days ago, she’d caught him setting a saddle backward on a yearling. He claimed that animals always thought the saddle felt funny at first, and this way when he turned it forward again, it fit so much better the horse accepted it at once. His gentle, creative training tactics were exactly what she’d been wanting for her ranch’s stock.

  “What?” he said, and she realized she’d been staring.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I was just thinking it’s weird seeing you on top of a horse instead of next to one. That’s good, though. We hired you specifically because Jason doesn’t have the patience for the groundwork the colts need, and I don’t have the time.”

  He whistled through his teeth, patting Mary Kay’s neck. “Hear that, girl? The lady is surprised I can ride.” He shook his head. “I’d be offended if I didn’t think it was so funny that you hired me without seeing me on a horse, after all your talk about the ‘extensive interviewing process.’”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, caught off guard by how easily he slipped into her flat accent. “Shut up.”

  He laughed. “Careful. The Politeness Police are going to come for you any second, sirens blaring.”

  “I’m not that polite.”

  “Sure you’re not. And I’m not really all that tall,” he drawled.

  She rolled her eyes and snorted. After a week of cooking lessons, she was getting used to his teasing. “You know, since you can apparently sit a horse, I should mention we have a rodeo coming up.”

  “Thought this was a fancy show barn.” He did jazz hands, scaring Mary Kay and having to take a second to settle her. “Rodeo’s allowed, too?”

  “Better be, or we might have a hard time selling all the roping horses Jason insists on training. This is only our tiny local competition, though. Good for business, but better for fun.” She raised her eyebrows. “If you’re nice, I might even lend you a horse. You rope much?”

  LJ smirked. “I’m not going to get much roping done from the back of a stick horse, and something
tells me that’s all my behavior’s going to win me.”

  “You might be right about that.” She smiled and nudged her gelding with her heels, moving into a smooth sitting trot. “Think about it. You’ve got a week and a half.”

  “Hey, you busy this afternoon?”

  She stopped and took a second to school her horse on turning on his haunches.

  When she was finished, she looked up. LJ was still waiting, apparently too much of a trainer himself to get offended at being prioritized behind a learning moment for a horse. “Am I busy? Always. But I could probably juggle some things. Do you need help with one of the foals?”

  “Nah.” He took off his hat and swiped a sleeve across his sweaty forehead. “I’m headed into town to get some groceries. You ought to come along.”

  Shadows chased across the ground between them as the breeze pushed thin clouds in front of the sun. The scent of toasted almonds drifted toward her, and she inhaled, wondering if it was LJ. He always seemed to smell like something delicious.

  “Have I been eating too much of your food during our cooking lessons this week?” She shifted in her saddle. “I could give you some money to cover it.”

  He rested a wrist over his saddle horn, the corner of his mouth pulling up into a crooked smile. “You? Eating too much? Even on the pitiful salary you pay me, I think I can afford two extra bites and a dinner roll per day.”

  “Your salary is twelve percent above industry standard!”

  “Sure, but I’m thirty percent better than industry standard.” He grinned. Mary Kay shied at a bee flying by. He turned her in a circle, her hooves kicking up dust.

  Andra rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses, though she couldn’t help a smile. LJ was rarely serious for longer than two minutes at a stretch, but she liked that he wasn’t all kid gloves and dark, pitying looks when she was around.

  “Anyway, I don’t need you to come to the grocery store to bankroll your cooking lessons. I need you to come because I’m still weeping inside over the state of the avocado you tried to feed me the other day. Somebody’s got to teach you to properly choose produce.”

  “Maybe I was trying to get rid of a bad avocado.” She lifted a brow. “Ever think of that, Mr. Thirty Percent Better Than Everyone Else?”

  He smirked. “I love it when you give the finger to the Politeness Police, Andie-girl. I’ll pick you up at four.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, forcing their presence into every corner of the grocery store.

  “Easy with your fruit testing there. That’s a peach, not a tractor tire.” LJ nabbed the now-dented peach from Andra with a wince.

  “If you’re going to keep making fun of my produce-choosing skills, you should realize we’re standing in an entire room of things I can throw at you. Did I mention I was a pitcher in college?”

  He smothered his smile. She got a cute little spark in her eye when he teased her. Loosened her right up, which she definitely needed considering how tense she’d gotten when he drove them past city limits today.

  “Nope.” He took her hand, undeterred, and folded a fresh peach into it. “Gentle now. You want a little give but nothing too squishy.”

  “What do you mean, nope?” She ripped a plastic bag off the roll. “Does that mean the peach is a yes or no, Bossy?”

  “It’s a yes. Now pick me four more.” He nodded toward the display and took the bag so her hands were free. “The nope was to you being a pitcher in college. 4-H is my bet. FFA, maybe. Honor roll, definitely. Softball, no way you had time. Not the way you sit a horse.”

  She glared at him, and he snickered. One point for him, none for her. Girl had a half-decent poker face, but he was learning to read her okay. Especially that little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth that the scowl couldn’t quite cover.

  When he was a kid and first visiting the ranch, his uncle had told him, “Horses do all their talking with their ears. So they look at humans and think, ‘They ain’t got nothing to say.’ But humans speak with their faces, and horses can’t move their faces. So humans look at horses and think, ‘They ain’t got nothing to say.’”

  Andra’s face usually stayed as smooth and beautiful as any marble-hewed Michelangelo. She did all her talking with her back. Iron stiff, or easy and supple, going with the flow the way she did when riding one of her beloved horses. Right now, her back was still about two jokes away from relaxed. What was it about going to town that set her off?

  The grocery store manager peeked at him from across the display, pretending to rearrange the already-stocked Fuji apples. LJ gave him a pointedly wide smile and tipped his hat, glad he’d traded out for his clean Stetson before he left the ranch.

  “I’m going to grab some walnuts,” he told Andra, setting the bag in their cart.

  An apple leaped out of the store manager’s hand and dropped to the floor, rolling bruisingly away. Normally, LJ would have chased it down for the man, but he wasn’t quite in the mood.

  His mood wasn’t improved any when the manager abandoned the apple in favor of following him to the bulk bins, lurking practically in his hip pocket as LJ filled a bag with walnuts. There went the idea that the manager was interested only in the novelty of an out-of-towner hanging around the daughter of local ranching royalty. Nope, this guy thought he was protecting his inventory.

  LJ’s plastic bag ripped and he retrieved a new one, careful not to use too much force as he transferred the walnuts over. Sometimes he wished people would outright call him a thief. An insult was a hell of a lot easier to respond to than a sideways look, or a clerk who always just so happened to be in the same aisle as you.

  He took a breath and unlocked his jaw. “Nice weather we’re having, huh? Supposed to rain later this week.”

  The manager’s eyes widened, as if he hadn’t expected him to speak. Or maybe he’d screwed up his enunciation. He’d been letting it slip too often lately, when he was alone with Andra. Girl must have a thing for accents, because the steel melted out of her spine when he let his out to play.

  “Um, is that so? What day?”

  “Tomorrow. It’s already clouding up out there.” Actually, it’d still been hot enough to melt the tar on the pavement when he escorted Andra inside, but he needed something to say.

  The manager nodded, relaxing a little.

  LJ went back to Andra, double-checking her peach selection.

  “Not bad. You want to get some ground beef? Highest fat they’ll sell you. We’ll need it for gravy. I’ll nab us some dried mustard and herbs, and we’ll be out of here.”

  Before he’d even finished talking, she was pushing the cart toward the meat section. “I’m on it.”

  LJ took a second look at her when she failed to tease him about needing more seasonings. She never missed an opportunity to tell him his spice collection was ridiculous.

  Her lashes were down and her shoulders up, eyes skittering away from the other shoppers, especially the one pink-cardiganed matron who kept staring their way.

  He ground his back teeth and headed for the fresh herbs. He should have known better, taken a few weeks to get people used to him before he showed up with a white rancher’s daughter. Hell, he did know better, but that didn’t make it less ridiculous. He wasn’t going to hide his friends just to keep the town gossips quiet.

  He rushed them through checkout, even letting Andra pay for a small portion of the groceries because he didn’t dare argue with her and give the grocery checker a reason to claim domestic disturbance.

  Once the groceries and Andra were safely loaded into his truck, he blew out a long breath. “I’m sorry about that.” He forced a chuckle. “I think I might be the first black guy this county has seen outside a TV screen. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  She tucked her hands between her knees, pressing her palms together a
nd staring out the side window. “They weren’t looking at you, LJ.”

  His shoulders hunched tighter, because white people always rushed to make excuses. As if racism wasn’t a thing anymore, because in their world, it wasn’t. So they gave everybody else the benefit of the doubt, like they didn’t even realize that meant they were doing the opposite to you.

  “Yeah, Andra. They were.” It came out harsher than he’d meant it to, so he swallowed and said, “It’s fine. I knew when I moved to Montana that I was in for some wide eyes.”

  It was even worse back home, though. The store manager still tracked him from aisle to aisle even though he’d never stolen in his life. The Lower Ninth hadn’t had its own grocery store since Hurricane Katrina. Everybody knew exactly where he came from as soon as he unfolded his little wheeled cart, and they always expected him to lift a few items to make up for the bus fare on the three different route changes he had to wait through to get to the nearest store. Only in the middle of winter was it cold enough he could make it home before the milk started to turn.

  It was the stares, even more than the weight of the groceries, that made him insist his mama let him do the shopping.

  How was she getting by now? Before he left, a store had finally moved into the Lower Ninth—not a supermarket, but a corner store opened with the life savings of a guy LJ had bussed tables with back in high school. He’d bought everything he could there but still had to trek to town for the meat and milk. Mama had the cart, and the neighbors had promised to pitch in, but it was a lot of weight for her. Even when he’d bought his truck and moved out to his uncle’s ranch, he’d done the shopping for her every weekend.

  He tossed his hat on the seat between them, trying to shake off his mood. It was going to be different up here. It had to be.

  “I’m sorry,” Andra said. “I didn’t mean to say . . . Anyway, they do it to me, too. If it makes you feel any better.”